Sterling H. McDonald
Analyst · Northland Capital Markets
Okay, well, the tax rate that has been trued up to in this quarter is 40%, roughly. And what that -- the components of those are 34% federal; 8% Louisiana. But Louisiana allows the deduction for federal tax paid, and of course federal allows a deduction for Louisiana tax paid. That former one, the federal tax paid, so you're going to be 0 for a while. So in the Louisiana return, it won't generate a deduction. And in the federal return, we will have still a deduction for Louisiana. If there were federal taxes being paid, which should be after we burn through the $31 million of deductions that were created from stock compensation due to the exercises, then that rate would be 38% generally, and not 40%. And as you can see, neither of those rates are 34 plus 8, or 42. But I want to throw another element in here. Even though our tax rate's going up, our tax cash is -- our cash tax paid is going to go down. And the way the accounting rules work, unfortunately, is that all these deductions, this $31 million of deductions, they're called -- the term of art is unbenefited tax benefits. And that means that we will not be carrying those deductions through the P&L statement for financial reporting purposes, and therefore, we don't get a credit for those taxes not being paid. So when it comes time to pay the taxes, we run the provision like we normally would. We have an accounts taxes payable and we will be allowed to extinguish, if you will, that liability, wiping out the payable and then they're credit directly to equity. So still running through the income statements that runs directly to equity. It's unfortunate that you don't see the benefits of all that but the bottom line is, is that we're going to pay about $10.5 million less taxes than we otherwise would pay, overtime. It benefits us that $10.5 million of cash won't go out the door, and it benefits us that we will, over time, increase our book equity by the same amount. And I'm glad to take other questions if you have them on those points. And by the way, that only offsets current payables. It would not offset deferreds. Is that right, Rob? Okay.